


the flesh

by MarauderCracker



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Angst, F/M, I hate having to tag Kisa as Santanico, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:46:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: Carlos digs through his memory, tries to remember if Julio had the same skin color, if the slope of the ranger's nose and that of Arturo are the same. It's been decades --centuries-- and the faces have blurred with time, but the eyes --it's the same eyes, he knows, it's the same eyes.





	the flesh

_ Pero soy carne que quiere carne; _

_ soy vida que quiere vivir. _

 

Carlos sees him the first time --this first time-- and he  _ knows _ . What does he know, he's not sure yet, but there is a quake running up his spine, a different kind of hunger that rattles his bones and makes the venom in his veins boil. He looks up at the rinche, easy, calming gestures. "Ranger Gonzalez. I need you to holster that weapon for me, sir."

He doesn't understand the feeling, not just yet. Gonzalez looks just like any other ranger he's met --a little angrier, definitely smarter, but not a challenge to Carlos. He's  _ human _ . Anxious, furious, determined, but human. And he can be fooled, just like all humans can. "Sounds like your fellow rinches don't believe you," he jokes, but el rinche's frown doesn't soften one bit. There is something in his eyes --demonios, Carlos thinks, está sospechando. He rushes through the rest of the conversation, leaves Ranger Gonzalez locked in the room. 

He has bigger, more important things to take care of. Like those gringos, the Geckos. He heads for the RV, praying that the two assholes haven't done anything stupid yet, but his mind is still with the ranger. There is something about him, and Carlos wants to find what. 

He's standing on the other side of the frontier, el rinche's gun aimed at him, when he realizes. It's the eyes --just like Julio's eyes, almost sixty years ago, looking at him over the knife's blade before he lunged forward, trying to reach for his throat. Like the eyes that haunted him for a century after he put his sword through Akyaabil's gut, four hundred and twenty three years ago. Carlos shakes his head, pulls at the brim of his hat to cover his eyes from the sun. It's an illusion, he tells himself. He's just a rinche, just human. Carlos bows to forget his name. 

 

Pero el condenado shows up again. This is South of the frontier, this is Carlos' territory. He lived through the bad ol' days, and he will not allow another ranger to set foot on his land and make it back alive. Ah, pero --the ranger knows his fairy tales. "There are nine houses," he starts, and Carlos feels that shiver down his back again. Any fronterizo could know about the nine houses, though. Maybe he was just unlucky enough to find himself a ranger who still  _ really  _ believes in the old gods. 

"He's gonna wreck everything that you worked for," the ranger says, fiery eyes, blood dripping down his chin. Carlos digs through his memory, tries to remember if Julio had the same skin color, if the slope of the ranger's nose and that of Arturo are the same. It's been decades --centuries-- and the faces have blurred with time, but the eyes --it's the same eyes, he knows, it's the same eyes. 

"Who is it?"

"You give me the Geckos, I'll give you a name."

Carlos stares him down. If he's got the same blood, the same fire, he won't back down from the challenge. The words hang heavy around them, el rinche's shoulders are tense. He keeps pulling at his restraints, like he's always done, like he'll always do. 

"Narciso."

"You surprised me," Carlos lies, voice soft, a raise of the eyebrows. He always knows more than he should, that doesn't come as a surprise. But Carlos had expected another couple decades of calm, twenty more years of quiet before he came back and turned his world upside down --otra vez. "I don't like surprises."

He orders his men to have Gonzalez killed. It's not that he can't do it himself --he's killed him before, and he will again. One lifetime ago he developed a soft spot for this man and, though that patch of tender skin on the crook of his neck has hardened over time, he just doesn't want to bother finding out if he'd still hesitate before pulling the trigger. 

  
  


He can feel the blood under his fingernails. The suit he's wearing smells expensive, but his own skin reeks of blood and sweat. He's almost grateful for the cloud of tobacco smoke that floods his senses when he enters the Titty Twister. He's gotten here just in time for the show, Freddie realizes. Carlos' voice echoes through the speakers, it makes the hair on his arms stand. There is something about it --something other than the purposefully theatrical ring of it, other than the rehearsed charm of his words. Like the knife had against the palm of his hand, it calls to him.

But Freddie ain't here for ancient visions or hypnotic voices. He's carrying a promise and a knife, wearing Carlos' stolen suit, and he's here to kill the Gecko brothers. Everything else --his fear, the law, the drumming noise that rattles his bones as the dancer flashes on and off stage-- is secondary.

There is something familiar about the dancer. Santanico Pandemonium --that name, too, causes a stir at the back of his brain-- moves away from the stage, steps over the tables and the audience rushes to offer their hands for balance. Freddie follows her path with his eyes and there they are, the Geckos, their hostages sitting with them at a round table.

He feels that he's walked on this same floor, feels like he should remember  _ something _ . The dancer, Santanico, pours alcohol over her own leg and for a second his vision is an over-exposed image. The clear tequila turns red under the light. His fingers ache on the knife's handle. 

"This is for Earl."

  
  


"You said you handled el Rinche," Santanico hisses. He answers something --the words come out of him without really thinking them, his mind elsewhere. There were times he could feel his death, but he feels nothing in particular now --maybe the connection didn't get a chance to fully wake up. Maybe he  _ is  _ dead.

Carlos knows about los Otomi just about everything one could have learned in five hundred years, but he still hasn't gotten any answer to the most pressing of his questions. He's killed him with the same sword twice --buried his remains in this same temple once. He knows that warriors die --that Freddie Gonzalez can and  _ will _ die-- just like all other creatures that live under the sun or within the shadows do. What Carlos wants to know is (he's exhausted, he's devastated, he's seething from five centuries of this cruel dance) just how many more times must he die before the gods decide that he has to stay dead.

"He led a pinche rinche to the foot of our table!" Narciso says. Carlos' mind finally snaps back to reality. Narciso's mocking grin makes his blood run even colder.

  
  


"You rejected her venom," Carlos says, standing over him. Freddie tries to grasp onto the familiarity of his voice, tries to place the feeling before it goes away again, but there are shards of glass digging into his back and every single bone in his body hurts, every other thought is clouded by pain. Motherfucker throws  _ salt  _ on the bite-wound Santanico left on his neck, and Freddie can't stop himself from yelling. He wants to try and use the seconds Carlos is distracted --"That hurt?" he mocks, knocks back a shot of tequila-- but Freddie can't bring his body to respond quickly enough.

He can feel every detail this time, not just the fangs digging into his neck. The pump of blood, the burn of the venom. But with the burn comes something else.

He's laying on the floor of this same room --it looks different, though, no flashy lights or neon signs, gas lamps shining over the bar-- with Carlos' sword against his chest, pressing just hard enough to draw blood. Carlos' hair is longer, his clothes seem to be straight out a documentary about the Zapatista Revolution. He looks tired. "No quería que termináramos así, no otra vez."

He comes back to Carlos walking away from him. "Your bloodline is ancient, but you're not invincible," Carlos says. Freddie doesn't know if what he saw was a memory or a warning, but he decides he doesn't care. He struggles to get up, reaches for the nearest weapon. The leg from a broken table serves him as a spear.

The motions come to him easy --he puts two knives through each of Carlos' forearms and it feels like he's done this already, like they've had this fight before. Carlos grins up at him, blood on his teeth. Freddie grabs the sword and presses it against his chest.

  
  


In the labyrinth, Carlos walks the same path over and over. The thirty one years of his life, the five centuries of his death, again and again like he's walking in circles.

Kisa kills him and brings him back a dozen times, she falls in and out of love with him a hundred. The peacekeeper dies fifty deaths, all by his sword, and he regrets every single one. Your goddess will only love you once, the labyrinth says. The warrior will love you for as long as he exists, and that will always be his demise.

In the labyrinth, el gringo does what he's failed to do: he frees Santanico, and together they step into the light. The gates to El Rey open for them --Freddie is, too, on the other side, skin golden under the sun, where Carlos can never go. He watches his lovers walking away from him, turn their bare faces to the sun's warmth, every step further out of his reach. In the shadows, Kisa sinks her teeth into his neck and he sinks his sword into the warrior's chest, the calendar is an endless circle that ends and begins with loss.

Carlos offers what's left of his soul to the labyrinth. In return, the temple gives him a chance to break free. Within the bounds of the night, but free.

  
  


"You remind me of the bull," la culebra had told him. He's never been to a corrida de toros, or cared for the tradition at all, but the fragments of a memory push to the front of his mind. He remembers more now, flashes of past lives that have been slowly but surely forming an image in his head. 

He's standing under the bright mid-day sun, a heavy weapon hanging from his holster and his shirt sleeves rolled up. From where he is, at the very heart of the crowd, he can see her. She's wearing a long dress and brightly colored flowers in her hair, her cheeks flushed and a delighted smile on her lips. The torero is taunting the bull, dancing around it, flashing Lorena a smile. She smiles back, dimples at the corners of her mouth. She looks happy and full of life --under the sun, they all do. The bull charges forward, and the entire crowd holds its breath.

There is a splash of blood, Lorena's horrified scream. In the dim hallway, her eyes turn bright gold. She must have been turned soon after --she doesn't look a day older than she did in Freddie's memory. He wasn't the bull, but Lorena is right. He killed because it was in his blood, he died because it was written in the stars and in his veins. Her smile is cold. You will kill and you will die all the same, her eyes are saying.

He accepts the mission, because it's in his blood. The picture forming in his mind is a map.

  
  


Here, deep under the cold dark earth, he cannot sleep --but he dreams nonetheless. He dreams of Kisa and he dreams of el rinche. Julio had kissed him fiercely and gasped when Carlos sank his teeth in his lower lip, let him bite his neck and lick at the blood dripping down his chest. He had different scars and a birthmark in the shape of the waning moon on his upper arm and he fucked like he fought, he loved with fury and aimed his knife without hesitation. Carlos had to kill him. He had to--

He wishes he could rot, wishes he could die, aches to walk in the sun. He hungers for Freddie's skin, for Kisa's touch, for a drop of blood, for revenge. When the hunger and the darkness drive him delirious, he dreams of El Rey.

He stands on the stairs of a temple and the sun shines of him and his warrior is by his side. Akyaabil's chest is bare and his skin is dark and Carlos kisses him without the weight of destiny on his tongue. In El Rey, they live forever and the night never comes, he never has to sink his sword in his warrior's chest. In El Rey, Kisa's smile isn't tainted by blood and they are allowed to love and live and feel the light on their skins.

When the dream fades, the taste of warm mud on his tongue replaces it. This time, he promises himself, when he kills the peacekeeper, when he kills  _ Freddie _ , he will stay dead.

  
  


Because he has a fate written in blood and a target in the hollow between his shoulderblades --because, just like his father knew what was best for him, Freddie knows what is best for his daughter-- he doesn't come back. Every couple weeks, he makes sure that he isn't being followed and visits, kisses his baby girl and hugs Margaret tight, but he doesn't stay.

Maybe one day he'll get to come back for good, to pick up his badge and sleep next to his wife and pretend that the dead stay dead. Maybe one day he'll get to stay, he hopes every time, but there is a war waging and Santanico is on the run and he cannot escape destiny.

The visions leave him feverish and exhausted --memories of past lives and possible futures tangle in his dreams and haunt him under the burning sun South of the frontier. He dreams of killing the Geckos still, sometimes; and dreams that each and every one of the Lords tries to kill him. He sees his daughter, and that poor kid Kate, and Earl. And he dreams of Carlos.

His own arms and chest look like a map due to the patterns of discoloration caused by vitiligo, and he wears his hair in one long braid. He doesn't know if his face looks the same because there are no mirrors in this tiny wooden cabin. Carlos looks just like he remembers him, though. Hair greased back, that insufferable smirk. He's leaning in with bared fangs but Freddie doesn't recoil. (Freddie's not his name, he knows, but it will be, in another life.) Carlos stands close enough that their chests are almost touching, his hips a perfect fit between Freddie's thighs. Carlos' teeth sink where his shoulder meets his neck and the burn of the venom makes a shiver run up his spine.

"We could be kings together," Carlos mouths against his jaw (they are tangled together, and Freddie's skin is covered by intricate tattoos, his own hair shorter and Carlos' longer) and drags human teeth down Freddie's neck. "They would shiver at our sight." Freddie wakes up sweating, shaking, with blood under his nails and a long, deep wound scratched on the side of his neck.

  
  


He has the labyrinth's wisdom, and more pride and stubbornness than he's ever had patience, but this is an exercise in nothing if not patience. So he waits, and he whispers, and he waits some more. Carlos calls for the old lunatics, the fugitives and the college students in soul-searching trips until he finds one with a sight.

He twists the story a little to make himself look better in the girl's eyes. He's a devout subject and a scorned lover in this version: he wanted freedom for himself and for the woman he loved, and got punished for it --and that's just as an honest truth as anything else. He's a liar, a murderer and a thief; sure. But the girl doesn't need to know that, and he was lied to and killed and robbed too. He deserves his redemption, he deserves his revenge.

The girl wanders for miles, hungry and half-delirious, scavenging for the discarded parts of his body. The stupid gringos should have gone further, he thinks. Maybe if they’d buried his head in Alaska and dropped his limbs into the sea, he might have stayed in his grave. They were lazy, and it only takes him nine months and seventeen days to get out. When the girl finishes putting his limbs together, he grabs her by her dirty hair and pulls her down, sinks his teeth into her neck. She’s weak and dehydrated but he basks on it, laps at every last drop. He takes the phone and wallet from her backpack, leaves her body.

He still hasn’t decided what, exactly, he’s gonna do when he finds Kisa and Freddie, but it’s not gonna be pretty.


End file.
